Timeline of the World Wide Web

The internet is without doubt one of the most brilliant inventions in the history of mankind.

We’ll put it up there with electricity, fire, and instant noodles. Since its inception as a communication system at CERN, it has gone from strength to strength. But there have been some rocky moments.

Here are the most monumental moments of the World Wide Web:

March 12, 1989: British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee circulates his “informational management proposal” at the European organisation CERN, laying the foundation for the World Wide Web. He releases the code to the public on Christmas Day 1990.

1993: Mosaic, the browser credited with popularising the Web with an intuitive interface, is developed by a team led by Marc Andreessen at the University of Illinois. Mosaic is the basis for the commercial browser Netscape in 1994.

Mosaic browser helped visualise the web.Source:Supplied

1994: China gets its first internet connection, but filters content. The White House launches its website, www.whitehouse.gov; some users who enter a .com address instead of .gov end up at a porn site.

Launches include David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web, the forerunner to Yahoo, and Amazon.com.

Yahoo back in the day.Source:Supplied

1995: Microsoft releases internet Explorer, touching off a “browser war” which eventually will kill off Netscape.

1998: Google begins operations, quickly growing into the leading search engine. The US government hands over control of the web domain system to the internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a private entity.

2000: The internet virus ILOVEYOU infects millions of computers around the world, causing billions of dollars in damage and highlighting the need for online security.

The ILOVEYOU virus was instrumental in highlighting online securitySource:Supplied

Internet fever drives the tech-dominated Nasdaq composite index to a record high of 5,048, ahead of the bursting of the dotcom bubble, eroding more than 75 per cent of the Nasdaq value by 2002. The index fails to reach 5,000 over the next 14 years.

2001: Napster, a wildly popular music-swapping service, is ordered shut by the US courts in a key ruling on online copyrights.

2002: A denial of service knocks out eight of 13 root servers that allow for internet connections.

2005: The number of people connected to the internet tops one billion.

— The social network Facebook reaches one billion members; A NASA probe checks in on Foursquare from Mars.

Social media goes to outer space with NASA’s rover checking in on FoursquareSource:Supplied

A global telecom treaty is signed by 89 UN member states, with some countries claiming the US has too much control of the internet. The United States and 55 other countries reject the document, saying it could lead to government regulation of the internet.

2013: Some 2.7 billion people worldwide are connected to the internet, about 40 per cent of the world’s population. Chinese overtakes English as the dominant language.